To Rome With Love is not just a shout out to The Eternal City but a shout out to Italy’s greatest director, Federico Fellini (with all due respect to De Sica, Bertolucci, Visconti Antonioni, Rosselini and Zeffirelli). Watching this movie is a joy in and of itself but it will also make you want to pick up a copy of Amachord. The film is sort of Woody Allen’s Roma excepting it is more than a little more narrative and coherent than that film. Before jumping up indignation, Fellini, wanted Roma to be chaotic, Allen has a different aim and audience for his film. It is a series of unconnected vignettes all set in Roma, a young couple coming to the city, a schmuck who suddenly becomes famous for no apparent reason, a man visiting where he spent his youth, and Allen himself along with his wife coming to Rome to visit his daughter and her fiancé. While the film does channel Fellini it also, in some cases, takes Allen back to his “older, funny movies.” There are scenes in this that call to mind Take The Money And Run—except instead of playing the cello in the marching band the sight gag involves an opera. Allen isn’t a youngster anymore.

The collection of actors, as usual for Allen, is stellar. Alison Pill, wonderful as Zelda Fitzgerald in Midnight in Paris, is Allen’s daughter and Judy Davis his wife. This segment is probably the funniest followed closely by the portion featuring Alec Baldwin “running into” Jesse Eisenberg. Or is it the segment with Roberto Benigni as a schlemiel suddenly famous across Italy with the press on his heels at all times the funniest? Benigni is a stand-in for Allen, in a movie including Allen. In his last film Owen Wilson was Allen’s “self.” The portion of the film about the young couple, a schoolteacher and her husband, is also wonderful and reminiscent of Felliini. He comes to the city to meet uptight relatives who mistake Penelope Cruz, a hooker, for his wife. She, played by the lovely Alessandra Mastronardi, gets lost in Rome while trying to find a place to get her hair done. The husband, played by Alessandro Tiberi, is another version of Allen and he is a perfect Italian Woody Allen. How many Allens can you fit in one film? As in Midnight in Paris, Allen takes his audience on a tour of the City of Lights. He also takes time to skewer the pompous (making himself a target) and fire a couple shots across the bow of our “reality television” entertainment world. None of it is done in a heavy or ham-fisted way. This is a light movie, it is a sweet movie. It is a movie you get to see Penelope Cruz in a short skirt. Where is Woody Allen going to go next? Allen has turned into a directorial version of “Where’s Waldo.” He took on Paris last year and Rome this year. I am hoping Sweden.

Thank goodness I found your blog! I thought I was the only one who saw all the Fellini touches. I particularly loved the way the traffic cop at the opening was so obviously badly dubbed, a very sly reference indeed. And the close, where the guy leans out his window around the corner from the Piazza da Spagna? Right around the corner from Fellini's apartment.

Marti! I did not know that about the ending. I think it is pretty hard to miss the Fellini references...to Roma, Amachord and maybe even Ship Sails On...Allen doesn't OVER do it though. I have seen some lukewarm reviews of this that I GET. But usually those are people who do not like or do not know Fellini.

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I don't think of these as "reviews." they may seem like it sometime but they are more just...impressions.